Tag Archives: emotions

New York-based artist Samantha Keely Smith paints abstract landscapes that resemble the swirling, unknown depths of the ocean. Although Smith’s work appear to depict real sceneries, she is inspired by inner worlds- precisely, by the energies and colors that mirror the flux of emotions.

“My images are not at all real places or even inspired by real places. They are emotional and psychological places. Internal landscapes, if you will. The tidal pull and power of the ocean makes sense to me in terms of expressing these things, and I think that is why some of the work has a feel of water about it. My work speaks of things that are timeless, and I think that for most of us the ocean represents something timeless.”

Working with oil paint, enamel, shellac, and large scaled canvases, the artist creates grand works of art that feature multiple translucent layers of color, soft but large and imposing brushstrokes, and sweeping gestures that evoke crashing waves, surging tides, and stormy floods. ( via My Modern Met)

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In his latest series, “I Have Something To Tell You”, Adrain Chesser uses his own illness, AIDS, in order to catalogue the pure, raw emotional reactions of his friends and family as they are told the terrible news . The Florida-born photographer, snapped portraits of his loved ones moments after he shared this life-changing information.

“When I thought about having to disclose my illness to my friends I would panic, which didn’t make sense, because I have an amazing group of friends who are all very loving and supportive”

Filled with a series of genuine reactions ranging from shock to panic to sadness, Chesser’s loved ones do not hold back. The beauty of this project relies on these subjects’ faces- most which reveal intense, unfiltered emotion. Chesser had long used photography as a method of interpreting and understanding his own emotional life– a “spiritual practice”, he calls it in a interview with Huffpost. The images, past and present, served him as tangible memories that later aide him to further understand past mistakes, or hidden victories. In this case, Chesser uses the camera as a mediator-a placeholder between two entities that feel broken, yet bonded by a painful experience.

Chesser believes that the diverse reactions of the 46 different people he photographed (without their prior knowledge of the project) reflect each individual’s personal experience with death and illness. He remembers everything from tears, to laughter, stoicism and confusion after confessing his diagnosis. (via HuffPost Arts)

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Korean artist Rim Lee creates The Mess of Emotion, a haunting series of oil paintings that combine performance, photography and oils. The multi-faceted paintings work well within the themes the artist plays with, as they literally show the woman’s tortured yet delicate essence driven by emotional distress quite beautifully.

Lee plays model for her photographs; these [photographs] are then referenced in her paintings. The act of transferring the realistic image onto a canvas [a surface which usually allows for unworldly expression] indicates an unyielding desire to break free from the idea that judging character solely based on interpretations of physical characteristics and movements is in part, wrong.

Aptly so, the paint acts as a conduit for emotion and expression; the paint washes over Lee’s hyper-realistic physical portrayal, creating a dialogue between the two polarities.

The heavy-expressionistic brushstrokes fill the canvas with texture; they rise above anything else, as to indicate relevance on behalf of the otherwise invisible mental anguish she is going through. [via My Modern Met]